What's the consensus on openspace over-subdividing?

I'm not sure how I feel about an increasingly-common practice in rental estates, and I'm curious what the general community consensus is on it. More and more often, I'm finding openspace sims cut up into as many as 16 individual parcels up for rent (sometimes residential, sometimes unzoned)- but without any mention AT ALL about the fact that it's not a regular island.

The only indication you have that it's an openspace sim is the reduced number of prims (1/4 the number of prims for a given parcel size on a mainland sim or a 1.0-multiplier regular estate sim) and, occasionally, a lower-than-normal rent price for that size of parcel.

The prim bonus exploit has been fixed, so I don't consider renting an openspace to 16 different tenants as outright fraud, but a fully-packed openspace sim WILL behave differently from a regular island, and it seems to me like this is something you should mention in land listings and the covenant. There isn't any indication in the Second Life UI that a given island is an openspace, so potential renters need to already be familiar with common prim/parcel ratios and understand the differences between sim types in order to know what they're getting into.

As I mentioned, these places usually seem to charge lower-than-normal rental rates (per parcel size), but they're not 75% lower like one would expect, considering you only get 1/4 the prims, and worse performance than a regular sim with an identical script/avatar load.

So... I'm really struggling to make up my mind how I feel about this. I don't really consider these estates serious immediate competition, since I don't cut up openspace sims... but I sort of have this lingering fear that many first-time tenants who rent on these estates, with no previous land owning/renting experience in Second Life, are going to have a really sub-par experience on an overcrowded openspace island, and think "Sheesh, owning land in Second Life sucks! Let's not do this again!" when that same tenant might have had different expectations if they had known that there was a REASON their rent was so low, and that their experience might have been much better on a regular sim, or an openspace with fewer neighbors.

I really start to bristle when I think folks are engaging in a practice that can damage the industry for me, my competitors, and our customers. So. Are my niggling fears warranted?

thats disgusting, 16 residents on an open sim? things like that should be stopped, LL even states on the buy page:



i think one or two residents is ok IMO as most of the sims surrounding mine are open sims and seem to perform fine with the one or two residents there. anymore than that would be ridiculous tho.

-Crunch

It's a gaming of the system similar to how search, traffic, picks, and other aspects of SL are gamed. It's unfortunate but not unexpected.

As far as how bad it is, truth in advertising is key for me. The people chopping up OpenSpaces and renting them out should make it clear to their renters exactly what they are renting. This applies to both oldbies who know about OpenSpaces and newbies who never heard of them.

Failing to mention that the land is OpenSpace land and that the sim shares CPU-time/prims with other sims is dishonest - a lie of ommision. I would not rent that land or anything else from that person.

But, if they do make all that clear and the renter is cool with it because they just want a place to relax, chat with friends, and not do anything resource intensive, then even though it's violating their intended purpose, at least everyone is in the know so have at it.

--Hugsy

hmm im finding it irritating in a few ways, many will dispute this..but i DO happen to have first hand experience of opensims or as i prefer to call them void sims.

1) Voids have issues with scripts- thats a fact...i dont care how many people who sell & rent these for people to live on dispute..they have a REASON to state its all cool...it isnt..script errors abound...they get laggy as hell...and no, often a restart does not clear it.

2) People who do rent on this voids will probably get a bad impression of estates...and lump us all together...another nail in the coffin for private estate owners, we get bashed all the time anyway...can do without issues arising from unscrupulous landlords renting out to stores & 10 other home owners on a void sim tyvm.

3) How can you compete , they pay so much less per month for their maintenance fee..in comparasion...we will get left behind when we try to cover our out goings- Im not even talking about wanting to make a vast profit.

These voids we created for open spaces...for water...scenery...I tihnk the way they are being used and allowed to be used with little policing by LL is outrageous to be frank. A couple of lines about *not supporting them if they are used for other purposes" does what exactly?

I spent quite a few hours this w/e visiting other rental places (hello! if im on your visitor list lol) and not ONE single place that was renting multiple homes or stores on a void sim mentioned it or the fact that you cant use it as a normal sim, it was just rental boards with all the homes or store space available and low low low price with more prims...
its the new way to game the system i guess..and it will lose SL a lot of cash...there are companies out there specialising in renting voids...offering to buy them for you if you dont already own an estate...this is so many shades of wrong i was gobsmacked.

tsk

Fai x

If LL only want them used for water/scenery, why have they recently doubled the prim allowance and now delivering them unconnected to other islands?

I don't think they should be cut up into anymore than four, but do believe LL now expect them to be used for homes etc.

what you believe and what they state dont tally. I wouldnt presume anything from their actions until they state otherwise..

It's called turning a blind eye. They've sold like hot cakes, but you start having performance issues and LL are going to point you to the section that says what their intended use is.

As for the main point, I don't like the way they're marketed. I haven't got one because they're not a viable model for me with VAT payments, although if Jack wants to give me a free one I'll happily live with the hit on tier payments!

They shouldn't be cut up into 16 and it should be made clear what people are renting, it's a little bit iffy to market them as islands in my opinion.

Every time LL turns a blind eye to fraud it ends up hurting them in the long run. The last thing they need is yet another set of residents who've been "burned" by sleazebag rental-barron wannabe's.

This will be no exception.

Too bad they couldn't find a way to meet what is obviously a demand by coming up with an actual 1/4 mini-sim of land-mass and would have all the normal prims that you get with 1/4 sim. Oh wait. The real demand was for yet another get-rich quick scheme by defrauding your fellow residents. Sorry, my bad.

Glad this topic got brought up! I've *lightly* parceled two openspace voids in the last couple weeks or so (only a few residents each) and haven't updated my covenant yet. I describe all my regions in that.

Yeah the residents all know what they have, but in my case the info isn't there if they pass on the parcel to someone else yet. I transfer all parcels so I'd mention it of course, but it's gotta be recorded properly in the covenant to save a lot of nonsense.

It's just not right to omit the fact that a region is an openspace. Period.

I think subdividing open-space sims and not telling people what they are is fraud and it will take advantage of unsuspecting people who do not yet have much experience. The number of people doing it is not trivial. I am also amazed at the price that some of these people are asking for these parcels.

I have some open sims and I do not subdivide them and do not allow subletting in these sims.

I am not sure how to deal with them, the thing that I worry about is sharing a server with some other open space sims that are getting misused. How will that affect the performance of my sims? How can I make sure that my customers are not affected by the unethical behavior of these unscrupulous people?

.d

This is anecdotal, and from personal experience only...

...until the last few months, after 2 solid years of trying I was unable to detect *any* unexplainable lag in an openspace region.

I was very interested in finding it, because back then renting such regions was what I'd call 'expert use only' - you really had to know what you were doing. Only 1875 prims and the class 5 regions (the openspaces worth renting) were very new.

Recently, things have changed a bit. I generally check around a bit each night, to see if openspace regions are doing anything untoward, such as low frame rates when nothing much else has changed in them.

And yes, I've found four or five instances of it in the last couple of months. Not bad, insofar as I've got something like sixteen of these regions. In a couple cases, region framerates were severely impacted - below 70% of top speed.

Restarting fixed all instances of the inexplicable serverside lag, and I *presume* that it was caused by other regions heavily loaded down, though it could have been something to do with memory leaks or god-knows what in the openspace instance itself.

Analysis: I think openspace regions are generally pretty dead, avatarwise, in general - thus 99% of the time there isn't one on a shared server when you are loaded down. When there is, a restart shakes it loose, and the odds of landing on a heavily used core are remarkably low.

Objectively comparing serverside lag on openspaces to standard regions, I've found (in general) more texture and script overloading on standard regions than voids. Not due to tech issues but because in general, people stop trying to be careful on standard regions and abuse them horribly.

Consider it for yourself from your own experiences: where do you experience serverside lag?

* * * * *

A big question will be: will it get better or worse? I think with the advent of Mono, script lag is going to go waaay down in time. As for textures - well it's more of a social question.

At pricing around 100/mo, 99% of openspace renters aren't noobs, know better than to fill a region with texture-bloated crap, and know better than to buy texture-bloated crap. Worst of all - dare I say it? Oldbies don't log in as frequently - not with the same voracious inworldliness of a new resident. So this tends to make another huge difference.

Just my experiences so far.

Oversubdividing of all sims is bad really.
People silly enough to try this will get caught when they suddenly run out od prims or the good tennants bail out as performance crashes, good potential tennants may even spot this mony saving idea, then again if he's charging a cheaparsed rate for cheaparsed land then buyer gets what they paid for I guess.

I moved my club to an openspace sim. It's not a high traffic club, usually not more than 20 AVs at any one time. I have noticed *no* difference in regards to lag, in fact, the lag seems improved because rezzing is faster/fewer textures to load in the sim. Perhaps if there were 50 AVs at one time, things might be different, but it's never my intention to have that kind of crowd.

I heard "oh you shouldn't move a club to an OS sim" but couldn't figure out why it should be so much more worse than 1/4 sim on a laggy full sim... and so far it's been great and I don't see that changing.

Personally, I think the notion that "openspace sims are just for water/scenery" is simply not true any more.

How many prims would a 1/16th parcel of a openspace sim even be?

wondering how the other 3 voids sims are performing that youre hogging the resources for are performing? Maybe they ARE using them as water or scenery, maybe they are all walking in syrup...but tough..because you and your club are good to go.

this is EXACTLY...whats bad about them...its the "im all right" attitude..a club??? good lord...

about 250? ish...i guess? It used to be 3750 for a void....but i heard they upped it a little.

It's like having a 1024 meter lot, with the prims and price of a 1024 meter lot (234) only the lot size is 4096 meters. It's all a matter of personal preference and options. Some people don't mind being easy on the scripts and textures for the sake of more room, privacy, and open area to landscape. It's just another option.

Only thing I hate about them is the fact that my full sims are a lot harder for me to rent out since they introduced single open space purchase.

responsible estate owners...ensure and check that people are not affecting the use of standard islands for other users pleasure. As more and more of these voids are used irresponsibly...and from what ive seen this w/e , the way they are being marketed...people wont even be aware of the isues on a void...i see it becoming quite the problem. One poster here already stated "moved my club , no issues" is that sensible or responsible use?

From the comments ive received from new people, questioning my rates against void rates..id say the new breed of void owners are hitting JUST that market..ive had quite a few people move on to *own their own land" on a void...attractive rates "owning" the land rather than renting a home...

my reseacrh this w/e was to see just what was out there and how it was marketed...didnt make me feel very happy on many levels.

Exactly Sarah...for those of us who adhere to the rule of their use and do not buy them to rent out...it is harder to compete..will LL make our prim limit higher to compensate...will they police the whole thing better and penalise those using them irresponsibly? Will they make my monthly fee a LOT less to make keeping my class 5 attractive?

Doubtful, but im forced to compete , the search is jam packed with companies offering to buy voids for people who do not own a full sim...for rentals _yes i saw plenty with about 10-12 homes ..and very falteringly had to drag myself around them...as lag bogged me down. Ive got a brilliant high spec pc...and found on most (no, not all) it was pretty "flickery" the more that was on them...we all know how people out to make a quick buvk operate...maybe you wont, or desmond...but wheres theres cash there will be those who dont give a damm.

well doesn't that basically force people to do it to stay in business?

If the competition is leasing out the land in openspace sims with more privacy/same prims/price ...

How do you compete with that long term?

Privacy is one of the big reasons people buy a lot of land in the first place.

thats why i was out and about checking them out...exactly. you cant compete really...so you look at the option...as Sarah said, my fear is performance (which i have to say was not good on the many i visited sat & sun) and how it would effect the rentals i already have...

I feel so twisted over the whole thing..but feel compelled to have to do it..but here iam, still abiding by the speel on their use...and not sure if i want to introduce their running problems onto my residents...~sigh~

So why would this be *so* signficantly different if the same club were on 1/4 of a full sim? We're talking about 20 AVs here, not 80, and quite low script use - I *checked* it when things were full force.

Before I moved the club, it was in another sim for 1.5 years. During that time several places came and went. At one point there were 3 other clubs in the same sim. 2 would often operate during the same time mine was.

My point was... people said it would be laggy. That hasn't been the case. Performance has been great. But you *assume* that performance is impacted on the other sims... because of 20 AVs in one section. That's just conjecture on your part. Somebody give me the tool to see how those other 3 void sims are performing, and I'll try to be a nice neighbor. But until then, there's no way for me to check that out.

Well I suspect the case of 1 openspace sim user hogging resources is no different than a full prim sim owner doing exactly the same to the other 4 sims on his server.
I thought there were 8 void sims per server?
If there only 4 then they would still perform better I expect than 4 full prim sims on the same class server.

Done: http://neighbours.maxcase.info/

Meanwhile I'm a little conflicted on this. We rent a lot of residential openspace sims which we cut into thirds and of course it's a very popular product. You get a huge amount of space for almost no money and at least for residential puposes there's no noticeable performance impact. Probably it's borderline to what is being complained about here. We're not exactly cutting them into 16ths but we're not renting them whole either.

Personally I don't think it's deceptive at all. People are paying for a quarter of the prims and they get roughly a quarter of the resources they would on a full sim. Realistically openspace sims perform about the same as mainland sims except for scripts which run about a third slower. I view it as much the same sort of thing as buying a regular quarter sim. You can put whatever you like on there. You don't expect landlords to write an enormous schpiel when they rent mainland indicating that someone else might own the rest of the sim and your scripts may run a little less than infinitely fast.

I think much of what is going on here is sour grapes from the old school mega land barons who are starting to see customers leave them for openspaces which are a superior product in many ways. They're being left with half empty full sims that are bleeding money while the rental market is actually exploding as people flood into openspaces. It's lucky for me that I got into the business just at the start of the explosion or I'd probably be a little bitter myself.

The bottom line is that the residents buying open sims are new or ex mainland residents.

1. new residents - are bloody happy to be able to buy/rent a full sim for quarter of the price, they would have to pay before this, these residents don't need 15000 prims, they are not creators/builders, nor for that matter do they need many scripts. Although I agree open sims shouldn't be cut to 16, if there were the probability that all 16 residents would be on the same time is low, and if this was ever the case, sim degradation would be blamed on SL having a bad day, which is no different from what estate managers have always said, even from good honest established land barons.

2. ex mainland residents - are bloody happy to buy/rent for all the above reasons, plus it's more likely that a resident who has already had land will be looking for land area no less than a quarter of a open sim, they're looking for more land so a 16th wouldn't cut it with them anyway, most have probably rented the sim in full. They will have better privacy, less lag and probably a lot more fun than they ever had on the mainland.

There are probably many more reason why its better than not, so you either take this on board and compete or don't.

By the way, I do not presently own any land in SL, when and if I do it will be a full sim with 15000 prims, which I know I can use up in a day.